


Silverweed by Night

by opalmatrix



Category: Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Death, Existential Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 04:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16485548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix
Summary: Silverweed, despairing, pursues his death. He doesn't end up where he expects.





	Silverweed by Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edo no Hana (Edonohana)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> Edo-no-Hana asked, "how does the Black Rabbit feel about Silverweed's warren?" A very good question, and this is what came out as an answer.

Each day was shorter than the one before, and colder. But then there came a bright, still morning with sun shining through the thin, clear air and warming the rabbits who came out to feed.

Silverweed felt his spirit rise. No urge to poetry took him. He thought of nothing but the warmth of the sun, the taste of the carrots that had been left for the rabbits, and the way Saysenthil was looking at him as she came over to feed.

"How are you this morning, Miss Saysenthil?" he asked her, after they had exchanged their formal greetings.

"Oh, I'm fine. More than fine," she replied. "This sun makes everything feel lovely." She was very young and very pretty,

"I'm glad for that," he said. "As for me, seeing you happy is even lovelier than the warmth of the sun."

She cocked her head to one side, considering him. "You really mean that, don't you?"

"Of course I do. I always speak the truth."

She ate a fragment of carrot, watching him from the corners of her eyes: beautiful eyes, warm and wide. "You asked me a question the other evening," she said at last.

His heart fluttered. "I did," he said. "You told me that wanted time to think."

"I've done thinking now," she said. "When I'm ready to have kittens, they will be yours."

The day, already bright and shining, glowed around him like early summer. He hopped over to her, and they pressed their foreheads together for a moment. Then a group of three other young does came by. "Oh, Saysenthil! I see you told him!" said one.

The other two nudged each other and looked over at Saysenthil.

"Go talk with your friends," said Silverweed. He wanted her to enjoy herself, now more than ever.

"Will you look at that?" said one of the other rabbits. "You have some luck, Silverweed. We were wondering who she'd pick."

Silverweed stretched, feeling smug.

As the morning wore on, the rabbits started to go to ground. Silverweed waited for Saysenthil. After some time, her three friends came loping back without her.

Not one of them met his eyes as she hurried down the nearest hole.

* * *

By nightfall, the air was icy, with the smell of metal. Silverweed shivered in a lonely burrow near a little-used exit. Saysenthil, born just this spring past, had stopped running.

_The wires_.

Now there were only the visions that crowded his thoughts and sometimes came out in verse. He was not hungry. He could not sleep. Why was he still alive?

_Take me, Saysenthil, O take me on your dark journey._

At last he crept out into the darkness of the night. The shriveled grass was crisp and cold beneath his feet. He followed the paths his people had made between the trees, becoming colder and ever more weary. After a long time, in the first light of the rising moon, he saw what he was seeking: the shining loop of a wire. He gathered what was left of his strength and ran forward, into its shining embrace.

The pain was cold as the winter night but burned his neck like the heat of a sun-baked stone. His breath fought to escape his throat. His legs kicked and tore at the ground, seemingly uncontrolled by his will.

_SIlverweed,_ said an quiet, icy voice. _What are you doing?_

Silverweed opened his eyes. He seemed to be in a dim, flat place. No stars twinkled overhead. No weeds grew from the stony ground. Before him was a huge rabbit, as black as anything he had ever seen. _Answer me,_ said the Black Rabbit.

It hurt just to look at him. He grew larger, smaller, then larger again as Silverweed stared, terrified. But when the Black Rabbit speaks, you must obey. "I wanted to die, m-my lord," he managed.

_Why?_

"S-saysenthil died. S-she promised to have m-my kittens, and then she stopped running."

_You cannot be surprised by her death,_ said the Black Rabbit, and it seemed to Silverweed that the cold voice was full of weariness and disgust. _You imagined that death was better than where you were. What do you know of death?_

"I th-think I have seen it. In dreams."

Icy silence fell. The Black Rabbit's eyes were like dull stones. _Perhaps you did. The sight seems to have taught you nothing. Look over there, Silverweed._

One massive black paw gestured. Suddenly, in the dimness, Silverweed saw row upon row of irregular little hummocks, spaced as precisely as a Man arranges fence posts. He realized, horrified, that each hummock was a rabbit. They sat crouched down as though cold, eyes staring blankly ahead.

_If you really wish to be dead, there is a place for you,_ said the Black Rabbit. _There, at the end of the row. Take it._

Silverweed hopped forward, glancing at the rabbits before, behind, and to the side of him. They seemed to take no notice of him at all. They might as well have been piles of flints.

_Stay there, without moving, for a year. We will see if you are really ready to be dead._

"H-how long is a year, my lord?" asked Silverweed.

For a moment, he thought he saw a glint in the Black Rabbit's eyes. _Tonight is the longest night of the year,_ said the dread one. _It will be winter, then spring, then summer, then autumn. After the shortest day comes again, it will have been a year. Now, be silent, and do not move._

The Black Rabbit vanished, like a shadow when a cloud passes before the sun. Silverweed sat, wondering how he would ever stay still for a year. And what would he eat? But as time passed, he didn't become hungry, nor thirsty, nor sleepy. Nothing happened, except that he began to realize that he could not trust his eyes. Sometimes there was a rabbit in front of him, and sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes a new rabbit took the empty space beside him, and sometimes it was still empty. There was no sound, no scents. The air was still, neither hot nor cold.

Again another rabbit came and crouched beside him. She looked familiar, and suddenly he realized she was his mother.

_Marli,_ he started to say. But he remembered the Black Rabbit's orders and stopped. How could it be his mother? She had gone last winter: the wires, he thought. It was terrible to see her there, her eyes like dry pebbles.

And then she was gone.

The rabbits around him faded, vanished, and others took their place. Sometimes, for a few moments, he wondered where the Black Rabbit was. Did anything ever grow here? Did the sun ever rise, or the moon? Did all rabbits who stopped running come here?

The rabbit beside him was his littermate Burdock.

This time Silverweed was prepared. He hardly flinched. Maybe it wasn't really Burdock. No one knew what had become of him, really. Did they?

(But it must have been the wires.)

Burdock or whoever it was, faded and was gone. Silverweed thought about moving around, seeing whether he recognized any of the other rabbits. Surely Hazel's band had all been eaten by elil. Were they here? But Silverweed didn't stir from his place. He couldn't seem to remember how to make his legs work. That should have frightened him, but it didn't. Here there was no sun, nor moon, nor wind; no pain, nor fear, nor joy.

Now the rabbit beside him was Saysenthil. Her eyes were dull and lifeless.

Suddenly Silverweed's legs remembered their job. He went forward to touch noses with her. It was as though nothing were there. "Saysenthil!" he shrieked. "Speak to me!"

All the still, silent rabbits vanished. The Black Rabbit was before him. _You had an order, Silverweed. How can you be dead, if you cannot be still even for a year?_

"I could not help it, my lord," he whimpered. "You showed me Saysenthil, whom I loved. Even though I should have known she was not here, I could not help myself."

_Do you think all rabbit who have stopped running come here, Silverweed? What did you learn as kitten?_

That stopped Silverweed's lamentations. Suddenly he remembered Marli telling stories, the old stories that the other grown rabbits thought foolish, about the great chief rabbit who saved his people.

"Maybe," he began and stopped.

_Say it, Silverweed._

"El-ahrairah. They go with El-ahrairah. But…at the warren, they say it's just a story."

_And what of me? Am I not 'just a story'?_

Silverweed was silent. The Black Rabbit was much too powerful and overwhelming to be just a story. Then Silverweed asked, "Do I have to stay here?"

_I think that would be a waste. But it may yet happen. It may yet happen that all your warren come here, one after another. They may as well, come here, don't you think?_

Silverweed thought of Cowslip, of the others, of himself waiting for the day that the wire would take him. Waiting day after to day, as members of the warren came and went like shadows, disappearing as though they had never been. "I want to go back," he whispered.

_Speak up. Go back and what: walk about like a shadow of a rabbit, waiting for the day when you vanish too?_

"I'll leave the warren."

_And what of the others?_

Silverweed shivered, remembering how Cowslip and the others had mobbed the rabbits from Hazel's warren, tearing their ears, biting their throats. "They won't want to come, they'll…."

_And yet the strongest and most important rabbits of the warren listen to you._

Silverweed sat and thought. He remembered Dandelion telling stories, and how rabbits of the warren thought little of them. But Dandelion was not their poet. "It's winter, coming on. I can't expect them to leave until half-spring. Maybe that will be enough time. I will try."

_That is all anyone can ask, even I._

"The other rabbits. Hazel's rabbits. Have they stopped running?"

The air seemed to grow cold once again. _That is not my story to tell. If you meet El-ahrairah, perhaps he will tell you. Now, make yourself ready. This will hurt._

Suddenly, Silverweed was no longer in the drear no-place. He lay on real soil, uneven and hard with frost, and sharp pains were tearing at his neck. He smelled blood, but he was able to pull himself to his feet.

The wire, rusted through, lay a short distance from him.

Silverweed made his way slowly to the nearest entrance to the warren. Samphire, awakened by his whimpering, came out of his den and found Silverweed. He called several others, who were amazed that Silverweed had escaped the wire. He was made much of, had his wounds licked clean, was given some carrots. Slowly he realized that it was still the night after Saysenthil had died, He fell asleep at last at daylight.

In the middle of the day he shifted, trying to ease his wounds. He roused briefly and ate some parsley the other had left him, then fell again into a light doze.

_The open fields rose up, and up. The summer sun shone down. All along the ridge, rabbits sat, or played, or talked. Several were does, with litters, That lively fellow was Hazel, that scarred veteran was Bigwig, that one telling jokes to the does was Bluebell, who had escaped from Silverweed's warren-mates. And that quiet one at the roots of the big tree was Fiver. He looked up. 'Hello, Silverweed. I'm glad to see you here,' he said._

The Black Rabbit had spoken. Perhaps El-ahrairah had too.

**Author's Note:**

> Silverweed's time in the land of the Black Rabbit owes a lot to Nicholas Stuart Gray's short story "The Silver Ship," in his collection _Mainly in Moonlight_ (1967).


End file.
